[Sugar-devel] license of layout.py in Sugar Calculate activity

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Gonzalo,

Quoting Gonzalo Odiard (2015-06-18 13:33:57)
> In our project, is a common practice include a COPYING file in the 
> activity directory.
> Include the text on every file does not have sense for us,  more 
> thinking we still support old devices with few storage space, as the 
> XO-1.
> Could you clarify what are you asking for, specifically, please?
> In the next cycle I plan work on tools to make sure all the 
> information for packagers  is available n the activities. Is good have 
> you and others involved.

What I request is that you properly release your code as Free software.

Including a COPYING file (containing e.g. the full GPL v2 license) helps 
save space, so that each copyright holder need not repeat the full 
licensing terms but can refer to that common file.

The presence of a COPYING file do not imply anything being licensed, 
however: The COPYING file _is_ a license but does not _grant_ licensing.

Each and every copyright holder in a project need to license their 
contributions for the collective work to be Free software.  A common 
practice is to include copyright holders and licensing at the top of 
each source file (each copyright holder on one line with the years that 
copyright holder contributed to the file, and below the license).

Another practice is to list copyright holders and licensing terms as a 
summary in a file at the root dir of the project.  That practice may be 
adequate in tightly streamlined projects, but for Sugar projects which 
at its core strongly encourage copying code snippets and forking 
aggressively, I strongly recommend to embed the copyright and licensing 
in each file so it gets preserved when copying files across projects.

A project leader cannot state a license on behalf of other contributors, 
unless the contributors have handed over their copyright to the project 
leader (a practice common for some larger projects, e.g. the GNU 
project).


Concretely, I noticed a copyright statement for Aneesh in a file, with 
no corresponding licensing statement, and I request that Aneesh 
explicitly state the licensing of that file (e.g. "GPL v2 or newer").

It is not the only inadequate licensing issue of that activity, but a 
more prominent flaw.  Most translation files are wrongly licensed too...


Hope that helps,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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